Operation
Enduring Freedom was the initial United
States military response to the attacks
of September 11, 2001, in which almost
3,000 Americans and other nationalities
were killed by members of the al-Qaeda
terror network. When the Taliban,
Islamist extremists who controlled
Afghanistan, refused to surrender
al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the
United States launched its attack the
following month on October 7. The
operation, initially named "Infinite
Justice," was accompanied by a homeland
security military effort named Noble
Freedom. A part of Enduring Freedom was
Operation Anaconda, an undertaking to
root out al-Qaeda and Taliban personnel
in northern Afghanistan. With the
success of Enduring Freedom in 2002, the
United States would go on a year later
to the second phase of its war on
terrorism: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Stages of the Conflict

After the bombing of two U.S. embassies
in Africa in 1998, the administration of
President William J. Clinton conducted
retaliatory air strikes on a terrorist
training camp in Afghanistan, where bin
Laden was believed to be in hiding. The
air strikes failed to neutralize
al-Qaeda, however, and after September
11, President George W. Bush demanded
that the Taliban turn bin Laden over to
the United States.

The
Taliban stalled for weeks, claiming no
knowledge as to bin Laden's whereabouts,
while the Bush administration prepared
for war. Rather than undergo a lengthy
process of obtaining United Nations
approval for a multinational force, Bush
called on the help of America's major
ally among the major world powers: the
United Kingdom. (Canada and Australia
later also contributed troops to the
coalition force.) On October 7, U.S. and
British forces launched air strikes
against Afghanistan.

On October 25, approximately 25 aircraft
(including 15 carrier-based tactical
planes and eight to 10 long-range
bombers) struck seven strategic targets,
including military training facilities,
surface-to-air missile storage sites,
and al-Qaeda infrastructure. By November
9, the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif
had fallen to the Northern Alliance, a
loose coalition of Afghan factions
opposed to the Taliban.

Four days later, a combination of allied
air assaults and ground maneuvers by the
Northern Alliance forced the Taliban to
surrender Kabul, the capital, and on
November 17, the Taliban confirmed that
al-Qaeda military chief Mohammed Atef
had been killed in the allied bombing.

Near the beginning of the war's eighth
week, on November 25, Central
Intelligence Agency officer Johnny
"Mike" Spann became the first combat
casualty when he was killed in an
uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif. Three U.S.
soldiers were killed, and 19 wounded,
when a U.S. bomb missed its target on
December 2.

In December 2001, one dramatic phase of
the war ended as the Taliban surrendered
their last major stronghold in the
southern city of Kandahar on December 7.
Both bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah
Muhammad Omar apparently escaped from
the city. December 16 saw the fall of
Tora Bora, a cave complex where al-Qaeda
and Taliban holdouts had hidden. Six
days later, on December 22, Hamid Karzai
was sworn in as chairman of a six-month
interim government. Women, treated as
slaves under Taliban rule, could again
vote, participate in government, and
receive an education.

Early
2002: Operation Anaconda. On January 4,
2002, U.S. Army Sergeant First Class
Nathan Ross Chapman became the first
member of the U.S. military to be killed
by hostile fire. Fighting continued in
spurts until March 2, the launch of
Operation Anaconda. The largest ground
operation of the war, Anaconda involved
some 2,000 U.S., Afghan, and allied
troops, and would result in eight U.S.
deaths. Its purpose was to eliminate
Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters still
holding out in the mountains of
southeastern Afghanistan. But as the
mission came to a close some two weeks
later, assessment of its success was
difficult.

Over the course of an 11-day battle near
Shah-i-Kot, for instance, U.S. military
commanders had been forced to reassess
original estimates of enemy strength in
the region upward from 150 or 200 to
1,000. As that part of the offensive
came to a close on March 17, it appeared
that the U.S. military had produced as
many as 800 enemy casualties, but
numbers were difficult to determine. In
any case, civilian and military leaders
were not inclined to evaluate the
offensive in terms of body counts—a
lesson learned from the Vietnam War a
generation earlier.

Infinite Justice and Noble Eagle.
Enduring Freedom, as the larger
operation came to be known in November,
was initially called Infinite Justice.
The change resulted from concerns that
the original name had religious
connotations, suggesting that God was on
the side of the coalition forces.
(Similarly, in the wake of the September
11 attacks, Bush had once mentioned a
"crusade," an unfortunate choice of
words that played right into the
terrorists' claims that the war on
terrorism was an attack by Christians
against Islam.). Still, the coalition
took extraordinary measures, including
dropping thousands of leaflets and radio

broadcasts, to assure the population of
Afghanistan that the warfare was
directed at eliminating al-Qaeda
terrorists, not the practitioners of
Islam.

Accompanying Enduring Freedom was Noble
Eagle, a military operation designed to
safeguard homeland security during the
war in Afghanistan. The U.S. Coast Guard
(USCG), principal guarantors of
stateside port security, played a
central role in Noble Eagle. USCG
deployed 55 cutters (small armed
vessels), 42 aircraft, and hundreds of
boats to establish port and coastline
patrols. It also called up more than
2,800 reservists to support homeland
security operations at the country's 361
ports.

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